After the electrical mishap, Cline ponders the future of the memorial.

hawes spencer

"This is a concept sketch," says Cline. "The real thing will have fantastic graphics."

Mark Cline

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The installation of a dramatic memorial to 9/11 caused a
spectacle of its own Friday afternoon after a support cable touched
a live power line, sending up sparks and plunging several
businesses in downtown Waynesboro into darkness.

"We're all a little bit shaken up," said Mark Cline, the Natural
Bridge-based showman who planned the memorial. "We're just lucky
that no one was touching the cable."

According to witnesses, the incident occurred around 1:45pm as a
team was hoisting four soft plastic panels to cover one face of a
former cold storage building.
The idea was to create a representation of the twin towers of
the World Trade Center with patriotic images of a flag and eagle in
the background.

While power was restored in about an hour to the nearby Kroger
grocery and other businesses along Arch Avenue, the fate of the
memorial was uncertain at the original time of this posting. Cline,
aka "Professor Cline," has been working on the project for a
recently-assembled group called 9/11 Tribute.

The incident created a harrowing moment for Scott Balsley. A
childhood friend of Cline's, he took a day off work– his birthday–
to help raise the tribute. He and Cline were harnessed and hauling
up panels at the roof's edge when wind caught a panel "like a
parasail," says Balsley.

He says he saw the flash of electricity churning through one of
the...

A memorial to Jonathan Sullivan photographed August 19 at Ravens Roost.

PHOTO BY LISA PROVENCE

What may be Virginia's most beautiful Blue Ridge Parkway
overlook was also the scene of one of its most tragic accidents,
the June 15 rock-climbing
death of Alabama resident Jonathan "Sully" Sullivan. The
20-year-old's fatal fall, under investigation for nearly three
months, has finally been ruled accidental, according to the Park
Ranger leading the investigation.

"We do not believe there was any intentional cause of death,"
says Chief Ranger Steve Stinnett, who oversees the Parkway for the
National Park Service. "A mistake was made in the way the equipment
was configured."

Perhaps that's not too surprising that foul play was a prime
consideration, given the recent spate of homicides along the
Parkway.

Gil Harrington stands next to signs at John Paul Jones Arena. As extensively reported in the Hook, her daughter, Morgan Harrington, was abducted and slain after leaving a Metallica concert in 2009 and being denied reentry.

Courteney Stuart

The days of campus police leading murder and rape investigations
are coming to an end if the parents of slain Virginia Tech student
Morgan Harrington have anything to say about it.

On November 16, the Virginia Crime Commission will hear testimony
from the Harringtons and other victims in support of HB2490, also
known as Kathryn's Law, which would require campus police
departments to hand over such serious criminal investigations to
local law enforcement agencies.

"I don't anticipate a fight," says Morgan's mother Gil Harrington,
who visited the John Paul Jones Arena on Thursday, September 9 to
speak with media about the proposed law. "It just makes sense."

The mother of the young woman whose case inspired the bill, Susan
Russell, has also expressed hope that this year lawmakers will
approve the measure. (It was passed over last year by the Militia,
Police, and Public Safety Committee, which
recommended it for review by the Crime Commission.)

Having called it "a bill for victims," Russell says her daughter,
Kathryn Russell, was allegedly raped in an off-campus apartment,
and the alleged assailant, a fellow UVA student, was never
prosecuted or punished in any way by the school.

Russell has publicly criticized UVA for its handling of her
daughter's case, and she's not the only one. Liz Seccuro ...

George W. Bush won passage of the sweeping Patriot Act in October 2001, but it was a still-secret executive order that allegedly created the National Security Agency's warrantless search program.

White House photo by Eric Draper

There 246 victims on the four airplanes, 2,606 in New York City, and 125 at the Pentagon.

flickr/Raúl!

343 firefighters died that day.

U.S. Navy/Jim Watson

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We lost the World Trade Center. We lost 3,000 people. Black
people, white people, Asian people, Middle Eastern people. People
we didn't even think were at risk.

My girlfriend called me to say that a plane had crashed into the
Trade Center. "That's happened before at the Empire State
Building," I replied. "It'll be fine."

It was another half hour before I turned on a TV and saw it was
a passenger jet, not the crop duster I was expecting. I'm a lawyer,
and I was just about to run out the door to court when my partner
attorney told me a second jet hit the other tower, and in a split
second it became crystal clear that it wasn't an accident.

I was still wrestling with the news as I ran in to court and sat
down on the attorney bench listening to the cops in front of me
talking about the Pentagon. I corrected them saying, "No, it wasn't
the Pentagon; it was the World Trade Center." One of them turned
around and said, "It was the Pentagon and the World Trade
Center!"

My disbelief was growing by the second– maybe the biggest part
of it being, "Why are we still sitting in here doing traffic
tickets and whatnot like the world is still normal?" As I waited
for my case to be called, I kept running back and forth into the
clerk's office where they had a TV set up, and I saw the first big
chunk collapse.

I finished my case and raced back to the office to turn on the
TV again, and by the time I got there, the first tower had entirely
coll...

After more than two years on the market, this 9-acre listing in Ivy sold for $200,000-- more than 40 percent under assessed value and $125,000 less than the original asking price. Conveying with a small cottage and 2-4 division rights, the property offers myriad possibilities for the new owners.